Donal says that he offers 'some evidence from, and comments on, the [Philosophical Investigations] as to 'whether [Wittgenstein] is offering a criterion philosophy of sense and nonsense where we can see at work a variant of the idea that a concept with no criteria for its application is vacuous.' The notion of a criterion is introduced into Wittgenstein's philosophy in the Blue Book (1933-34) where it is contrasted 'symptom.' The closest he comes _anywhere_ to giving anything like a definition of 'criteria,' and 'criterion,' is in the following passage. 'Let us introduce two antithetical terms to avoid certain elementary confusions: to the question "How do you know that so-and-so is the case?", we sometimes answer by giving '_criteria_' and sometimes by giving '_symptoms_.' If medical science calls angina an inflammation caused by a particular bacillus, and we ask in a particular case "why do you say this man has got angina?" then the answer "I have found the bacillus...in his blood" gives us the criterion, or what we might call the defining criterion of angina. If on the other hand the answer was, "His throat is inflamed," this might give us a symptom of angina. I call "symptom" a phenomenon of which [sic] experience has taught us that it coincided, in some way or other, with the phenomenon which is our defining criterion. Then to say "A man has angina if this bacillus is found in him" is a tautology or it is a loose way of stating the definition of "angina." But to say, "A man has angina whenever he has an inflamed throat" is to make a hypothesis.' [Blue book, pp. 24-25] He then gives an account of what role these notions play in our actual use of language: 'In practice, if you were asked which phenomenon is the defining criterion and which is a symptom, you would in most cases be unable to answer this question except by making an arbitrary decision _ad hoc_. It may be practical to define a word by taking one phenomenon as the defining criterion, but we shall easily be persuaded to define the word by means of what, according to our first use, was a symptom. Doctors will use the names of diseases without ever deciding which phenomena are to be taken as criteria and which as symptoms; and this need not be a deplorable lack of clarity. For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules--it hasn't been taught us by means of strict rules, either. _We_, in our discussions on the other hand, constantly compare language with a calculus proceeding according to exact rules. 'This is a very one-sided way of looking at language. In practice we very rarely use language as such a calculus. For not only do we not think of the rules of usage--of definitions, etc.--while using language, but when we are asked to give such rules, in most cases we aren't able to do so. We are unable clearly to circumscribe the concepts we use; not because we don't know their real definitions, but because there is no real 'definition' to them. To suppose that there _must_ be would be like supposing that whenever children play with a ball they play a game according to strict rules.' [Blue Book, p. 25] Let me try to forestal a Donal-like objection: The Blue Book not only anticipates the more polished Investigations; it contains _everything_ that the later work contains (except for a detailed account of language games, and an appeal to 'forms of life'), and nothing of substance in it is taken back in the Investigations. Moreover, what is here said about criteria is (to repeat) the most thorough account of the use he makes of this notion in the later writings. To say that Wittgenstein offers a 'criterion philosophy' is absurd, if by that is meant that 'criterion' and 'criteria' are for him technical, or near-technical terms, whose employment is somehow essential to his project. To say that something is in need of a criterion is just to say that there must be something open to view, about which we can agree, in order to determine whether something has been done or whether, as in the example above, some state of affairs obtains. _Criteria for 'sense' vs. 'nonsense' are never mentioned, let alone employed_. These words have no special link to concepts, nor is there any argument that if there is no criterion for something's having been done, that we are somehow faced with nonsense. Nonsense arises when expressions which have a use in one language game are illicitly (perhaps unthinkingly) transferred to and used in settings in which they do not make sense: that something makes sense here, in certain circumstances, does not entail that it makes sense always and in every circumstance. What we're faced with in the absence of criteria is the _inability_ to make a determination, and in such a case, the best course is to _reject the possibility_ that things must stand one way or another.` 'It is as if you were to say: "You surely know what 'It's five o'clock on the sun' means. It means simply that it is just the same time there as it is here when it is five o'clock."--The explanation by means of _identity_ here does not work here. For I know well enough that one can call 5 o'clock here and five o'clock there "the same time", but what I do not know is in what cases one is to speak of its being the same time here and there.' [Investigations, Section 350] '...philosophical problems occur when language _goes on holiday_. [Sec. 38] Let me ask Donal for the second or third time where in the later writings he finds Wittgenstein talking about 'vacuous concepts,' or anything that could be construed as a rough synonym of that expression--except by way of arguing _against_ Frege's notion that concepts without sharp boundaries were concepts in name only. Let me ask too for a single example anywhere, of 'an unsayable rule.' Robert Paul Reed College ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html